Is Watching Porn Bad?

Pornography is more accessible than ever, and millions of people visit the most popular porn sites every second. So, is watching porn bad? Watching porn can harm relationships, mental health, and self-esteem. While watching pornography often feels good temporarily, you may be surprised to discover the negative effects it can have on you.

Negative Effects of Porn

It may be easy to think of pornography as being “victimless” because you think that viewing it doesn’t hurt anyone else, but viewing pornography can be harmful to yourself and others, including your partner. 

There are adverse effects to watching porn. Porn, more often than not, depicts degrading acts, misogyny, and unequal pleasure, and it can create unrealistic expectations and mental health issues for viewers. 

The negative effects of watching porn include:

• Psychological Effects. Regular pornography viewing can give you unrealistic expectations of sex, desensitize you, make it more difficult for you to be satisfied by real sexual experiences, and increase feelings of anxiety or depression. Overall, viewing porn can leave you feeling guilt, shame, or inadequacy.
• Relationship Issues. Viewing pornography may cause issues in your relationship, including hurt or betrayal, reduced intimacy, and less relationship satisfaction. Your partner may be hurt by the fact that you’re viewing pornography and think it’s because they don’t satisfy you or aren’t good enough. These feelings can cause real problems in your relationship.
• Social Effects. Spending significant time viewing pornography causes you to isolate yourself from others. It means you spend less time on positive activities you enjoy and can cause you to neglect your responsibilities. It also can cause you to have negative views of others, including degrading views of women.
• Addiction. Pornography can quickly become a way to escape from negative feelings, rewiring your brain and causing an addiction. As an addiction forms, you begin seeking more pornography and more explicit things to view to get the same feelings. This behavior has a negative impact on all aspects of your life and can cause relationship, financial, and even legal issues.

How To Know if You Have a Pornography Addiction

Is watching porn bad? While you may not consider the viewership itself to be negative, an addiction isn’t a good thing. So, how do you know if you have a pornography addiction?

Porn addiction is when a person compulsively views porn to the point that they become emotionally dependent on it. They can’t stop, and their pornography habit affects their everyday life. Porn addiction is a hypersexuality disorder, which is an obsession with sexual fantasies or urges. 

You may be experiencing porn addiction if it becomes a major focus, interferes with your daily life, and you can’t quit, despite trying. If porn has disrupted your relationships, finances, or work, it’s probably time to get help.

Signs of porn addiction include:

• Increased porn use
• Feeling guilty about watching 
• Inability to control your urges
• No longer enjoying sex
• Watching porn in inappropriate settings
• Spending excessive time watching porn or money on porn
• Increased tolerance for more extreme or violent porn
• Consuming thoughts of porn
• Neglecting responsibilities to view more porn
• Experiencing low self-esteem
• Having difficulty controlling your emotions
• Losing track of time due to watching porn 
• Hiding your porn watching from loved ones

If you think you may have a pornography addiction, but you aren’t sure, take our porn addiction quiz. While the quiz isn’t a diagnostic tool, it can help you get a better understanding of whether your porn viewing is cause for concern.

What To Do if You Think You Might Have a Porn Addiction

Now you’re concerned that you might have a porn addiction. What do you do if you’re wondering, “Am I addicted to porn?” The best thing to do is to contact a mental health professional who can help you understand whether there’s cause for concern. 

Beyond that, you can try to stop watching porn. If you find you can’t, it may be indicative of a bigger issue and a sign that you need to seek help.

An addiction isn’t likely to go away on its own, but there are some things you can do to attempt to overcome porn addiction, like installing porn blockers on your devices and enlisting the help of an accountability partner. You also can attempt to identify what triggers you to view pornography and do your best to avoid those things or replace the porn viewing with a more positive behavior. 

Getting Help for Porn Addiction

The best next step, if you’re concerned, is getting help for porn addiction. A variety of effective methods for porn addiction treatment exist.

Porn addiction treatment options include:

• Psychotherapy. You can work with a mental health professional to understand the past events that led to your addiction. Over time, you can recognize maladaptive behaviors, determine your unmet needs, and implement coping strategies.
• In-Patient Treatment. An in-patient treatment center can help you remove the stressors of daily life while you work with mental health professionals on healing and recovery. In-patient treatment also addresses any additional mental health issues that may coexist with the addiction.
• Intensives. Intensives help you become steeped in the work of recovery for a short, intensive healing period.
• Support Groups. Talking to people with similar experiences can be extremely validating, empowering, and healing. 

How Begin Again Institute Can Help

Whether you think watching porn is bad or not, being addicted to pornography has negative effects on your life. If you’re ready for help, Begin Again Institute is here.

We offer a 14-Day Men’s Intensive to help you stop destructive behaviors, heal from the root cause, and jumpstart your recovery. For a faith-based recovery option, try our Boulder Recovery 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive. It provides the same foundational healing methods, but it is steeped in the Christian faith.

Healing is possible. Contact us today.